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Saving Energy at Data Centers: Wells Fargo and Monsanto Inc.

Wells Fargo is a large financial institution that offers a wide range of services including consumer and corporatebanking, insurance, investments, and mortgages. Its revenue in 2007 exceeded $50 billion. The company is data-dependent and known for its eco-friendliness. In 2007, with the increase in energy costs, thecompany decided to go "green" in its two new data centers. Data centers must ensure security and availability of their services, and when they are planned from scratch, they can be energy efficient withlow power consumption. The two new facilities have over 8000 servers that consume considerable power and generate heat.
Several energy-saving features were introduced, including water-basedeconomizers that regulate energy usage and cool the physical environment, computer-controlled central fan system for cooling the floors, direct air to cool specific hot spaces, and semi-conductor chips thatautomatically shut off power until it is needed. With increasing volumes of data, Wells Fargo constantly expands and renovates its data centers, taking environmental concerns into consideration. Thecompany experimented with a solar system for making hot water, with motion-detector lights, and with variable-speed fans.
Monsanto Inc., a large global provider of agriculture products with 2007revenues of $10 billion, is building an energy-efficient data center that supports analysis of its worldwide operations. Two factors driving investment in the new center were the 50 percent annual growth indata usage and high cooling costs for the old data center. The mew energy-efficient center houses 900 servers and uses air for cooling rather that water. Another feature is the exterior glass shieldthat deflects 90 percent of the sun's heat.
Both companies have their data centers certified by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) of the U.S. Green Building Council. In the...